In tribute to that season, where we as a society, search for and celebrate, our common humanity -- I thought a historical journey through the plight of "commoners" (ie Laborers, the 99%) might be in order ...
Please excuse the randomness of this historical exercise. If you have more pressing gift-giving chores to attend to -- well, there are always the magic of 'Search Engines' to rely on later ... Isn't technology swell?
Common land
From Wikipedia
Common land (a common) is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel.[1] Originally in medieval England the common was an integral part of the manor, and was thus legally part of the estate in land owned by the lord of the manor, but over which certain classes of manorial tenants and others held certain rights. By extension, the term "commons" has come to be applied to other resources which a community has rights or access to. [...] "Common land" does not mean state-owned or public land, but is owned by private individuals or corporations called partition units.
Today commons still exist in England, Wales, Scotland and the USA, although their extent is much reduced from the millions of acres that existed until the 17th century.[2]
[...]
Common land, an English development, was used extensively under the law of England and Wales and in many former British colonies, for example in Ireland and the USA. All land in England and Wales is owned by someone, and in most cases that person has all the rights of exclusive ownership, to use the land as they wish. However, for common land the owner's rights are restricted, and other people (usually local residents) have some rights over the land. These people are known as commoners -- the landowner retains other rights to the land, such as rights to minerals and large timber, and to any common rights left unexercised by the commoners. For example, there are 500 practising commoners in the New Forest, England.[18] A famous example is the New Haven Green in New Haven, Connecticut. The North American colonies adopted the English laws in establishing their own commons.
Somewhere along that long course of History, Americans have lost sight of this basic concept of The Commons ... especially those who have manage to claw their way to the top, of the free market pyramid, usually over multiple generations.
Lost sight of that basic right of ALL humans to extract our subsistence, to "earn a living", from the renewable bounty, that the Good Earth provides, to us ALL ... at least, in theory.
Somewhere along way, Private Rights began to trump Common Rights ... well because as the modern saying goes ...
"Ownership has its privileges."
What sort of rights did those Commoners of old, dare to lay claim to? ... some even still do, up to the present day ...
Commoners' Rights
by Peter Davis, Friends of Naphill Common, UK
[...]
Right of pasture for two horses and two goats; a right of estovers; a right of firebote, i.e. a right to collect firewood sufficient to burn in the house. (1 commoner)
Estovers. Grazing for 1 donkey and foal, 1 pony and foal, 1 cow and calf, 12 hens, 2 geese and 2 goats. Riding. 1 donkey and 1 pony. (1 commoner)
[...]
Estovers: Wood that a tenant is allowed to take, for life or a period of years, from the land he holds for the repair of his house, the implements of husbandry, hedges and fences, and for firewood.
Firebote: The rights of tenants to take firewood
[* extracted from the Buckinghamshire County Council Register of Common Land − Registration unit CL.63 1968 update 1980]
Ownership. It used to be simple. Basic. Life sustaining, occasionally Life-fulfilling.
How does, the modern-day equivalent of this primal community sentiment go:
"Take only pictures, leave only footprints."
and
"... Teach a man to fish, and he can feed his family for a lifetime."
That's assuming he can find an unpolluted, public shoreline, of course.
Commoners' Rights
New Forest -- South Hampton UK.
The system of Commoners' Rights is one of the unique features of New Forest life. Introduced almost nine centuries ago, many of these rights for residents still exist today.
Commoning dates back to the creation of the Forest -- it was recognised that the restrictive Forest laws set out by William the Conqueror and his son, Rufus, were too harsh. A system of rights was established to enable Forest people to survive. These rights remain today.
A Commoner is a person occupying land to which common rights are attached. Around 800 houses and smallholdings in the forest have such rights, though only about half of the occupants exercise their rights.
[...]
Common of Turbary
The right to cut peat or turf to burn as fuel. It is required that for every turf cut two are left so that the grass can regrow to cover the gap.
Interesting ... even Commoners knew enough, to leave Nature enough to recover ... to leave enough of Nature's bounty for future generations -- to have their birth-right share, too.
So, from where do our claims to Exclusive Property originate?
And from what baseline, did extreme wealth and greed, start to 'go off the rails'?
Short answer: When we, as a nation, as a society, in practice, loss sight of the Rights of Commoners. (This revocation of "common rights", is still ongoing by the way.)
When at some creeping historical inflection point, when the plight of 'future generations', and even our contemporary 'common neighbors', began not to matter as we, the survivors, each fully engaged, in our our individual pursuits ...
"Ready, Set ... Go!"
and it was off to the Races ...
"The one with the most stuff, at the end -- Wins!"
The Second Treatise of Civil Government -- 1690
John Locke -- 1632-1704
[widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers.]
CHAP. V. -- Of Property.
from constitution.org
[...]
Sec. 26. God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And tho' all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature; and no body has originally a private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man. The fruit, or venison, which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his, i.e. a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his life.
Sec. 27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.
Sec. 28. He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the property; without which the common is of no use. And the taking of this or that part, does not depend on the express consent of all the commoners. Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property, without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.
[...]
Sec. 40. Nor is it so strange, as perhaps before consideration it may appear, that the property of labour should be able to over-balance the community of land: for it is labour indeed that puts the difference of value on every thing; and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labour: nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour.
Did John Locke just postulate that "ninety-nine hundredths" (ie. 99%) of increased wealth, owes its existence, primarily to the creativity and hard work of Labor?
Incredible ... too bad, once Labor became a Commodity -- for sale to the highest bidder -- the lenders of Labor, also traded away all claims to that value-added wealth, that which their blood, sweat and tears, had created.
I would contend, that we need a renaissance of this idea of the The Commons again. We need a renewed National theme, that proclaims loudly, that "we're all in this together." That all workers, deserve a 'share of their creativity' -- or lacking that, a Living Wage.
That we all have a stake in life, in our common planet. We all deserve a share of its renewable bounty. Especially so, the generations to follow us. Who is it now, that speaks for them?
In other words, we all should learn to "live within our means" (even the 1% hoarders) ... How do those wise old teachings on materialism, go again?
"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"
-- Matthew 6:26-27
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
-- Mark 8:36
The birds don't "build castles" or "establish empires" to prove their worth, so why do we? Here's an ancient secret: (Shhh ... Hoarding, it doesn't really work anyways ...)
The commons
From Wikipedia
The commons were traditionally defined as the elements of the environment -- forests, atmosphere, rivers, fisheries or grazing land -- that are shared, used and enjoyed by all.
Today, the commons are also understood within a cultural sphere. These commons include literature, music, arts, design, film, video, television, radio, information, software and sites of heritage. The commons can also include public goods such as public space, public education, health and the infrastructure that allows our society to function (such as electricity or water delivery systems). [...]
Peter Barnes describes commons as a set of assets that have two characteristics: they are all gifts, and they are all shared. A shared gift is one we receive as members of a community, as opposed to individually. Examples of such gifts include air, water, ecosystems, languages, music, holidays, money, law, mathematics, parks and the Internet.[3]
There are a number of important aspects that can be used to describe true commons. The first is that the commons cannot be commodified -- if they are, they cease to be commons. The second aspect is that unlike private property, the commons is inclusive rather than exclusive -- its nature is to share ownership as widely, rather than as narrowly, as possible. The third aspect is that the assets in commons are meant to be preserved regardless of their return of capital. Just as we receive them as shared gifts, so we have a duty to pass them on to future generations in at least the same condition as we received them. If we can add to their value, so much the better, but at a minimum we must not degrade them, and we certainly have no right to destroy them.[3] [...]
Now, if only the 1% Hoarders could somehow, be reminded of our common humble origins. Our individual wealth is only taken, is really only something borrowed -- and ultimately it must one day be returned ... to those who will follow after us ...
Look at the Hoarders. Even they too make their living from the bounty of the Good Earth, and from the sweat-equity, of the kind souls, that they callously employ ...
Isn't it time, the Private Property Owners learned once again, how to share?
Isn't it time, the Millionaires gave something back, to the Nation, that has given them so much?
Afterall the planet, is not really theirs to claim, as much as they'd like to think so ...
Sooner or later, their claims of exclusive ownership, must be passed along ... to those who will inherit the whirlwind, after them.
Maybe passing their bounty back to the Common Good, might earn them some much needed karma points? ... you never know.
For it is better to give, than to hoard, right?
Every kindergartner knows that one.